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Exploring the Giving Practices in American Mosques: Why Do Muslims Give So Little to Their Mosques?

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Exploring the Giving Practices in American Mosques: Why Do Muslims Give So Little to Their Mosques? JOURNAL OF MUSLIM PHILANTHROPY & CIVIL SOCIETY 51 EXPLORING THE GIVING PRACTICES IN AMERICAN MOSQUES: WHY DO MUSLIMS GIVE SO LITTLE TO THEIR MOSQUES? Ihsan Bagby University of Kentucky This article represents the first effort to explore the giving practices of Muslims in American mosques. The research for this article was based on two studies: (1) a previously published study, “The American Mosque 2011,” which consisted of 524 telephone interviews of mosque leaders; and (2) a previously unpublished 2013 study of 3 mosques and the 2016 follow-up interviews with donors from the three mosques. The results show that mosque attendees give much less than their counterparts in churches. Interviews with donors in the three mosques were conducted in order to draw some preliminary conclusions as to why the giving rate in mosques is low. The interviews indicate that one of the underlying factors for the low rate of giving is that mosque attendees do not have a clear theology for giving to mosques and that a culture of giving to mosques does not exist among immigrant Muslims. It must be emphasized that this article is exploratory. Broader and more in-depth studies are needed to develop definitive conclusions about giving practices in mosques. Keywords: mosque, American Muslims, giving Although Muslims have been present since America’s beginnings, they have had a significant presence only since the 1960s when America opened its doors to immigration from the Muslim world and large numbers of African Americans started to convert to Islam. The Pew Research Center estimated that as of 2015 the Muslim population was 3.3 million, with the expectation that the population will more than double to 8.1 million by 2050 because of continued immigration and a high birth rate (Basheer, 2016). In the US Mosque Study 2011, a total of 2,106 mosques were counted, which constituted a 74% increase from the year 2000 when 1,209 mosques were counted (Bagby, 2012a, p. 5). Just as the number of mosques is increasing, attendance in mosques is fairly robust: the average attendance at the weekly congregational prayer on Fridays (Jum’ah prayer) is 353, and the median number is 173 (Bagby, 2012a, p. 7). In comparison, the median figure for attendance in all U.S. congregations is 105—much lower than in mosques. In addition, attendance Copyright © 2017 Ihsan Bagby http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jmp DOI: https://doi.org/10.18060/21407 VOLUME 1 • NUMBER 1 • 2017 JOURNAL OF MUSLIM PHILANTHROPY & CIVIL SOCIETY 52 in mosques is increasing. Almost two-thirds of all mosques (65%) have experienced an increase of more than 10% in the past three years (Bagby, 2012a, p. 8). Another positive factor for mosques is that the socioeconomic indicators for American Muslims are overall very healthy. In fact, their socioeconomic indicators are similar to the general U.S. population. The 2011 Pew study found that 14% of American Muslims have an income of $100,000 and above, as compared with 16% of the general population (p. 17). The study also showed that, in terms of education, 22% of American Muslims have obtained at least a college degree as compared with 28% of the U.S. population (p. 17). Thus the giving rate in mosques should not be hampered by demographic variables such as low income. The income and education levels of the three mosques studied are higher than the averages in other U.S. mosques. In terms of income, two of the three mosques have attendees who earn more than the average American: the median income for attendees at the large suburban mosque is $87,000, and the median income for attendees at the small university-town mosque is $60,000, which is comparable to the 2013 median American household income of $52,000. The median income of the midsize urban mosque is $40,000, which is below the general population’s median income. Although the American Muslim community is similar to the U.S. population in terms of education, attendees at the three mosques studied are much more educated. According to the 2011 Pew study (p. 17), 28% of the U.S. population have a college or graduate degree, but in the large suburban mosque, a remarkable 83% of the attendees have a college or graduate degree, whereas the small university town has 68% and the midsize urban mosque has 55%. Thus all of the indicators of attendance, growth, individual income, and education demonstrate that American mosques are very healthy; therefore the logical assumption would be that the giving rate in mosques is comparable to the giving rate in other American religious congregations. However, as we will see, this assumption is false. In understanding American mosques, a complicating factor is that they do not follow the pattern of traditional mosques that exist overseas. Mosques in America are congregations, and they follow the typical pattern of American congregationalism, meaning that they are worship groups that are largely self-governing and self-supporting. Based on this understanding, congregations can be understood as a group of people who assemble regularly to worship at a particular place and are organized in a “pattern that places considerable power in the hands of the local body of lay leaders” (Wind & Lewis, 1994, p.2). Mosques thus function very much like other American religious congregations, in that they are largely controlled by a lay board and their survival largely depends on the generosity of the attendees. The complication for Muslims is that mosques overseas are not actually congregations in the same sense as just defined. The majority of mosques in the Muslim world are indeed gathering places for worship, but they are not controlled or financially supported by attendees. Mosques in the Muslim world are usually controlled either by the government or by a rich patron. Thus there is not a custom of attendees giving to mosques in order to pay for the salaries of prayer leaders (imams) or for maintenance of the mosques. All those expenses are covered by the government or a rich patron. VOLUME 1 • NUMBER 1 • 2017 JOURNAL OF MUSLIM PHILANTHROPY & CIVIL SOCIETY 53 Research Design This article relies on a few past studies and on the original research conducted for this paper. The past studies include the US Mosque Study 2011 (Bagby, 2012a), which was a key-informant, randomly sampled survey of 524 mosques.1 Comparisons and insights into congregational giving were drawn primarily from Dean Hoge’s classic study, Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches (Hoge, Zech, McNamara, & Donahue, 1996), and from the more recent study by Christian Smith, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money (Smith, Emerson, & Snell, 2008). The original, unpublished research includes a study of three mosques that was part of the 2013 National Needs Assessment of Mosques Associated with ISNA and NAIT (Bagby, 2013). Although the general findings of the Needs Assessment were published in 2013, the findings of the study of the three mosques were never reported. The data from the 2013 study of the three mosques included mosque participant surveys, interviews with mosque leaders, and observation visits to each mosque.2 In 2016 follow-up telephone interviews were conducted with selected mosque participants from the three mosques, focusing exclusively on issues of giving.3 The three mosques include (1) a large suburban West Coast mosque, (2) a medium-size urban Midwest mosque, and (3) a small university-town Southern mosque. Ethnically, all three mosques are extremely diverse and are not controlled by any one ethnic group. Two of the three mosques have a significant number of African American attendees. Although it cannot be claimed that these three mosques represent all American mosques, the three mosques are fairly typical of the diversity of mosques in terms of location, size, and ethnicity; they definitely do not represent outliers. Giving Rates in Mosques One way to calculate the giving rate in a congregation is to look at the average budget of the congregation and then divide that figure by the number of attendees.4 Because averages are sometimes distorted because some congregations have gigantic budgets, some researchers prefer to look at median figures (median refers to the middle point of a distribution) to gauge typical levels of giving. According to the US Mosque Study 2011, the average annual budget of mosques was $167,000 but the median budget was $70,000 (Bagby, 2012b, p. 20). Considering that the average 1 The US Mosque Survey 2011 counted 2,106 mosques. From that list, 727 mosques were sampled and 524 phone interviews were conducted with mosque leaders. The margin of error was +/- 5%. 2 Mosque Participant Questionnaires: 227 questionnaires were completed in the large suburban mosque, 119 in the midsize urban mosque, and 124 in the small university-town mosque. Interviews with mosque leaders were conducted in 2013 and 2016, some in person and some by telephone. Observation visits took place in 2013 and 2016. 3 Twelve interviews were conducted: six in the suburban mosque, three in the urban mosque, and three in the small university-town mosque. 4 Budgets of mosques and other religious congregations are comparable because budgets in both are generated largely by attendee donations as opposed to overseas donations, grants, or endowments. VOLUME 1 • NUMBER 1 • 2017 JOURNAL OF MUSLIM PHILANTHROPY & CIVIL SOCIETY 54 attendance at mosques is 353, the average annual giving rate is $473 per person. Calculating the median budget and the median attendance at 173, the median annual giving rate is $405. Looking at the three mosques as they were in 2011 and dividing the stated budget by the Friday attendance, we can see that the mid-size urban mosque had the highest annual giving rate of $467 per person, followed by the small university-town mosque with a rate of $400, and finally by the large suburban mosque with a rate of $200.
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